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Chapter 8. Using the Sauvage as a Lever to Decolonize France from the Ancients
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199 c h a p t e r 8 Using the Sauvage as a lever to decolonize France from the ancients in the beginning, all the world was america. —John locke, Two Treatises on Government (1680–90) Whoever considers the amerindians of this day, not only studies the manners of a remote present nation, but he studies, in some measure, the antiquities of all nations. —edmund Burke, An Account of European Settlements in America (1777) Sauvages on the Seine in a disneyland special avant la lettre, the inhabitants of rouen in 1550 imported “fifty natural sauvages”1 from Brazil to replicate an actual Brazilian village.2 in a gesture that would have made Walt disney proud, 250 French sailors were painted red to resemble the Tupinambas. But in a very un-disneyesque touch, they were all completely naked, “without at all covering the part that nature requires.”3 These French replicas were “fashioned and equipped like american sauvages”4 and supposedly resembled them so completely that they were indistinguishable. as one chronicler of this spectacle wrote, the French imitators “having frequently traveled to the country, . . . spoke the language and imitated the gestures and manners of sauvages, as if they were natives of that same country.”5 in this tableau vivant, sauvages went about what was supposedly their typical life. Some chased after monkeys who were climbing up trees—also painted red to resemble Brazilian trees. others were weaving two colonial stories together 200 more industriously employed, cutting brazilwood and carrying it to a fort constructed on the Seine. French sailors loaded it onto a ship whose sail pictured the fleur de lis. The Tupinambas exchanged commodities peacefully with French traders. This scenario was part of the 1550 royal entry that rouen’s inhabitants had staged to celebrate and welcome Henry ii and Catherine de Medici to their fair city. This festival’s theme was France’s journey from barbarism to civilization , as aaron Michael Wintroub has shown. Henry ii, its chief spectator, was also its lead actor. He led his entourage away from the primitive, barbarian existence of the Brazilian village and into the civilized world of rouen, a city transformed into the elysian Fields of a terrestrial paradise. in the city was a Garden of eden with a cornucopia of trees, shrubs, flowers, herbs, fruits, and vines. in the middle stood a statue of Henri’s father, François i. one ambassador , describing the royal entry, praised François i “for having restored letters and saved [rouen] from barbarism.” The festival was designed, in part, to urge Henry ii to do the same. it placed the king in a larger, messianic role of leading all the peoples of the world, not just those of France, toward civilization.6 i describe this spectacular royal entry to introduce the third escape route out of barbarism raised by the Quarrel between the ancients and the Moderns . This proposed path reconfigured the nation’s relations to both the new World and the ancient World yet again. But in this reconfigured narrative, the sauvage acquired positive meanings and was not the enemy. The Tupinambas were France’s allies in a mock sea battle against a common enemy—the Portuguese . This scenario exalted the Tupis’ superior martial spirit, exemplifying the same chivalrous ideals of bravery and military skill as France’s noblesse d’épée. one chronicler of the extravaganza praised the Tupinambas’ courage, emphasizing that their military accomplishments “surpassed the skills of Meryonez the Greek and Pandarus the Trojan.”7 in contrast to the Tupis’ alliance with the French, the ancients took on more negative meanings. This chapter examines the most successful escape route out of the bind from the nation’s colonized past. The moderns charted out their path by reversing the slope of history to imagine the notion of an evolutionary and historical progress. The moderns built their path upon the key move of the classical ideal discussed in the previous chapter which valued a cultural secondarity over a natural firstness. By virtue of coming second, the work of culture and art could harness, control and improve upon the deficiencies inherent in the primitive impulses of a first nature. But this revaluing of second cultural stage over a wilder first nature was only a first step that did not lead very far out of the bind [3.145.52.86] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:56 GMT) The Sauvage as a lever to decolonize France 201 because the classical ideal was...